Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!

Notices

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.

You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!

Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.

Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.

Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I have Mandrake 9.2 on my 60GB D drive. I have 20GB on my C drive which I want to put windows 2000 on. I'm sure I can install windows on C drive (had to do it many times before due to viruses) an will have 0 problems with it. What I am looking for is a way for when the computer first boots from power on, I can get a message prompting me to choose which Operating System I want to boot, either Windows or Linux. I'm VERY new to linux as I just got it installed last night feb 9,2004.

I'm just afraid of installing windows and not being able to go back to linux without disconnecting the C drive completely inside my box, because in the long run that's gonna get on my nerves, and being a newbie to Linux has my nerves on end now.

when you load windows it will wipe your mbr. i'd recomend making a boot disk for mandrake, then when you finish loading windows, use the boot disk to boot to mandrake. once there you can reinstall lilo, and, configure it to boot both os's. there are a ton of threads here about dual boot, try this link.

So you're saying that if I make a boot disk for Mandrake (D drive) and go ahead with the windows install (c drive), all I would need to do is put in the boot disk for mandrake and power up the machine?

I use two seperate drives for W2K and SuSE. I use grub to choose which OS I want to use, you could also use LILO.

After you install Windows on your primary master drive, (which will show up in linux as /dev/hda)
when you get ready to install linux on the primary slave it will show up as /dev/hdb that will be the drive you will want to format from linux, and install grub or LILO to /dev/hda master boot record.

which one did you install first windows or linux? I installed mandrake first on the bigger hard drive named D. I've been told in linux chat forums that if I shut down the pc, boot from the windows cd, install it in drive C, then it will only boot into windows and never give me the option for Linux. Mind you I'm terrible new the linux community and want to move away from micorsoft. So if it seems like I'm repeating the same thing over and over again, it only means that I don't seem to understand your answer. I'll wait for one more post and then I'm just going to install windows on the C drive and hopefully when it's done installing and I reboot there will be a black screen giving me the option to boot either linux or windows, just like when you have two operating systems on 1 drive, but in my case 2 seperate drives. I really hope I'm not making anyone angry here.

Install windows first, then boot from the linux CD, remember that in linux your C: drive will be called /dev/hda and the primary slave drive will be /dev/hdb that will become the linux drive after you partition and format it.

I had a similar problem. I had a copy of Win2K that I wanted to preserve intact while I experimented with Linux. I have two HD's: Master C and Slave - D. I disconnected C and installed Red Hat 8 including GRUB on D. Gaining confidence, I re-installed Linux on D with C still connected. This time, although GRUB was still installed on D, my Win2K MBR on C had been overwritten. Everything worked OK except that if I disconnected C the system would not boot and if I disconnected D the system would not load GRUB and I could not get to Win2K.

You will know how to re-install the Win2K MBR.

I repeated the installation of Linux on D with C disconnected and Linux as the only option in GRUB. I then reconnected C. I then had a system that could be booted from either C or D from the BIOS. Linux cannot see my NTFS Win2K disk and Windows cannot see my Ext3 Linux disk. Thus two entirely independent systems - if I want to do something drastic, I can just disconnect the other disk.